July 27, 2026
Jennifer Salimbene, LCSW-R, CASAC, TEP
When I think about the experiences that shaped my professional life, I realize that my time working at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, New York set the course that my professional life would take. Central to this was being introduced to psychodrama while I was there.
I was invited to assist Peter Pitzele, the staff psychodramatist who ran groups for young adults. I was a mental health worker and it was my job into help ground clients who were struggling with staying present in the group setting. In addition, I was often asked to take on auxiliary roles in participants’ dramas. As an auxiliary, I played the roles of people, objects, or concepts in the psychodramas. I had no idea that this experience would change the course of my career.
What I witnessed and experienced stayed with me.
Working with young adults in a psychiatric hospital meant being surrounded by young people who were carrying burdens of trauma, eating disorders, psychosis and other serious emotional challenges. Most of them were either guarded, withdrawn, or convinced that no one else could possibly understand what they were feeling. We had to help them establish trust in order face their issues.
One of the things I noticed about the psychodrama groups is that they got people out of their chairs and into action. Peter would ask questions that required participants to move around the room and find some someone they’d like to get to know better and share in pairs in order to find commonalities. For example, they might be asked to share something they liked about themselves or who their supports were. This meant they couldn’t just let the one or two talkative group members dominate the group. And it made it safer to share because it’s less challenging to share with one or two other people that you have something in common with than it is to share with an entire group. As group members began to discover the unexpected things they had in common, their defenses began to soften, and they were able to trust more.
The other thing I observed was that something amazing happened when group members moved. They came to life. They went from sitting on their chairs with their arms crossed looking at the floor to engaging with each other. They had agency. And they got to choose what to share and when. People talk about being client centered all the time, but psychodrama doesn’t just talk about being client centered, it is client centered.
After helping group members feel more connected to each other, someone would have the opportunity to put their story into action, that is, to be a protagonist in a psychodrama.
One of the psychodramas that really stood out to me was being cast in the role of a participant’s auditory hallucination of her boyfriend’s voice. Her boyfriend had died by suicide and the voice she heard was asking her to join him. I was struck by the intensity of this participant’s pain, and I believe that sharing her pain allowed other group members to share their suicidal ideation as well. Afterwards, this participant as well as the other group members who struggled with suicidal ideation were more open to treatment because they felt less alone. It was an honor to be chosen to hold this role for the patient.
In another group, with people struggling with eating disorders, I cast in the role of double. The double speaks the unexpressed thoughts and feelings of the protagonist. As the double, for one patient, I helped them speak about their fear of being made fun of because of weight issues and helped them give voice to the fact that they had been bullied for being overweight in the past. As a double for another patient, I was able to help them express the voice they internalized from their parents’ criticism of their body. For both patients, being able to speak about the underlying issues driving their eating disorders enabled them to identify their need for nurturing. Group members also doubled each other so that everyone in the group got a chance to feel seen and heard. This lessened their desire be invisible and disappear and allowed group members to nurture each other.
One of the things that I observed in the both the drama I described earlier in in doubling exercise I just described was that the audience wasn’t simply watching someone else’s story, they were resonating and connecting their stories to the story of the group. A common theme was a desire to have nurturing people in their lives and develop more self-compassion while decreasing shame and self-criticism.
I also saw that the healing that happened in the group didn’t come from advice or interpretation or insight provided by the group leader. The healing came from sharing with and supporting each other. The group members were helping heal each other.
This is where my love for psychodrama began. And that is still what I love most about it today.